The World Bank Group works with countries in Europe and Central Asia to help improve people's lives and achieve shared prosperity in a variety of ways, including through financial lending and analytical and advisory services. Our work aims to help countries achieve better competitiveness, more inclusive growth, and to adapt to climate change and improve energy efficiency.
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This report, Europe and Central Asia -
Missing Women in the South Caucasus : Local perceptions and
proposed solutions, discusses research conducted on skewed
sex ratios... Show More + in the South Caucasus. It discusses (i) the
factors that encourage sex selection in Armenia, Azerbaijan
and Georgia, (ii) whether and how these might be changing;
(iii) public awareness of and attitudes regarding skewed sex
rations; and to propose potential policy responses. The
report examines the following: factors contributing to
smaller families and unbalanced sex rations in the South
Caucasus, the reasons for underlying son preference,
attitudes toward daughters, factors that make women
vulnerable to pressures to produce sons. It also describes
how intergenerational and gender relationships are starting
to change and proposes some recommendations for addressing
the factors that underlie unbalanced sex rations. Show Less -

Some of the headings included in this
issue of the Development Economics Prospects Group (DECPG)
daily economic news are as follows: financial markets; high
income economies;... Show More + and developing economies in Europe and
Central Asia. Show Less -

Substantial upward economic mobility in
the majority of countries in Europe and Central Asia in the
2000s translated into achievements in reducing poverty and
boosting... Show More + shared prosperity. Although factors associated with
upward mobility vary significantly by country, education and
jobs undoubtedly play an important role in lifting
households out of poverty and helping them to improve their
living standards. This study finds there is a puzzling
mismatch between the objective economic mobility patterns
observed in survey data and people's subjective
perception of their mobility. A majority of people in the
region perceives they are worse off economically than in the
past and voice frustration over limited opportunities to
improve their lives. This disconnect is partly explained by
increased inequality in the region, an increasing sense of
unfairness in the processes to move up, and a more marked
sense of insecurity and vulnerability. Although the region
has been making headway in lifting households out of
poverty, ensuring sustainable progress toward poverty
reduction and shared prosperity requires policies that
promote human capital accumulation, foster job creation, and
offer adequate protection to improve households'
resilience to shocks. Show Less -

This third report in the Turn Down the
Heat series covers three World Bank regions: Latin America
and the Caribbean (LAC); the Middle East and North Africa
(MENA); and... Show More + parts of Europe and Central Asia (ECA). The
focus is on the risks of climate change to development.
While covering a range of sectors, special attention is paid
to projected impacts on food and energy systems, water
resources, and ecosystem services. The report also considers
the social vulnerability that could magnify or moderate the
climate change repercussions for human well-being. The
report complements the first Turn Down the Heat report
(2012) that offered a global overview of climate change and
its impacts in a 4 degrees Celsius world and concluded that
impacts are expected to be felt disproportionately in
developing countries around the equatorial regions. Also, it
extends the analysis in the second report (2013) that
focused on the consequences of climate change for present
day, 2 degrees Celsius, and 4 degrees Celsius warming above
pre-industrial levels in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and
South East Asia and demonstrated the potential of early
onset impacts at lower levels of warming. Show Less -

International Finance Corporation (IFC)
is working to develop solutions to close the micro, small,
and medium enterprise (MSME) financing gap, collaborating
with 97... Show More + financial institutions (FIs) across 20 countries in
Europe and Central Asia. As of June 2014, IFC committed a
total of 3.1 billion dollars to MSME finance in the ECA
region, 2.6 billion dollars for long term finance, 160.5
million dollars for funds supporting MSMEs, and 333.1
million dollars for trade finance. In fiscal year (FY) 2014
alone, IFC MSME commitments in the region were 1.0 billion
dollars (up 11.7 percent from 917 million dollars in
FY2013), 362 million dollars of which was attributed to
long-term financing. By the end of calendar year (CY) 2013,
IFC's MSME clients had 2.9 million micro loans
outstanding in the ECA (up 33.1 percent from 2.2 million in
CY2012), totaling 5.7 billion dollars (up 39.1 percent from
4.1 billion dollars in CY2012). Similarly, IFC's MSME
clients had over 1.5 million small and medium loans
outstanding by the end of CY2013 (up 14.4 percent from 1.3
million in CY2012), totaling 64.6 billion dollars in this
region (up 10.8 percent from 58.3 billion dollars in CY2012). Show Less -

The Financial Sector Advisory Centre
(FinSAC) helps national financial sector authorities prepare
to effectively manage financial crises, reducing risk of
problems in... Show More + individual financial institutions and financial
markets, having systematic consequences. Technical
assistance through the use of tailor-made crisis simulation
exercises (CSEs) seeks to test financial stability
arrangement and assess how legal and regulatory frameworks
work under distressed conditions. Undertaking practical,
simulated but realistic crisis scenarios allows those
involved to "learn by doing" and contributes to
team formation and trust development, vital for successfully
addressing policy issues in the event of an actual crisis.
CSEs are designed as diagnostic tools. In practice they also
function as validation tools for existing crisis management
frameworks, confirming what works well and what does not. Show Less -

This paper presents new indicators for
185 economies measuring the accessibility of business
regulatory information. The paper shows that the new data
can serve as meaningful... Show More + proxies for the overall transparency
of governments and the new data have explanatory power for
the quality of business regulation. The paper finds the
regulatory environment to be most opaque in Sub-Saharan
Africa and the Middle East and North Africa, where
businesses can often only access basic regulatory
information by meeting a government official. By contrast,
in countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, access
is more direct via websites, public billboards, and
brochures. Moreover, Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development economies are more consistent in their
transparency efforts across government agencies. The paper
also finds that while resources as proxied by income levels
play some role in explaining why some economies make more
information easily accessible than others, those resources
are not the only determining factor; regardless of income,
more democratic governments tend to make greater
transparency efforts. Finally, easier access to basic
regulatory information is associated with greater regulatory
quality and less corruption. Show Less -

This third report in the Turn Down the
Heat series covers three World Bank regions: Latin America
and the Caribbean (LAC); the Middle East and North Africa
(MENA); and... Show More + parts of Europe and Central Asia (ECA). The
focus is on the risks of climate change to development.
While covering a range of sectors, special attention is paid
to projected impacts on food and energy systems, water
resources, and ecosystem services. The report also considers
the social vulnerability that could magnify or moderate the
climate change repercussions for human well-being. The
report complements the first Turn Down the Heat report
(2012) that offered a global overview of climate change and
its impacts in a 4 degrees Celsius world and concluded that
impacts are expected to be felt disproportionately in
developing countries around the equatorial regions. Also, it
extends the analysis in the second report (2013) that
focused on the consequences of climate change for present
day, 2 degrees Celsius, and 4 degrees Celsius warming above
pre-industrial levels in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and
South East Asia and demonstrated the potential of early
onset impacts at lower levels of warming. Show Less -

This third report in the Turn Down the
Heat series covers three World Bank regions: Latin America
and the Caribbean (LAC); the Middle East and North Africa
(MENA); and... Show More + parts of Europe and Central Asia (ECA). The
focus is on the risks of climate change to development.
While covering a range of sectors, special attention is paid
to projected impacts on food and energy systems, water
resources, and ecosystem services. The report also considers
the social vulnerability that could magnify or moderate the
climate change repercussions for human well-being. The
report complements the first Turn Down the Heat report
(2012) that offered a global overview of climate change and
its impacts in a 4 degrees Celsius world and concluded that
impacts are expected to be felt disproportionately in
developing countries around the equatorial regions. Also, it
extends the analysis in the second report (2013) that
focused on the consequences of climate change for present
day, 2 degrees Celsius, and 4 degrees Celsius warming above
pre-industrial levels in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and
South East Asia and demonstrated the potential of early
onset impacts at lower levels of warming. Show Less -

This paper examines support for reducing
inequality and for income redistribution to specific groups
in Europe and Central Asia. The paper uses the Life in
Transition... Show More + Survey to analyze cross-country differences in
redistributive preferences and the determinants of
individual-level differences in such preferences. The
analysis tests for various possible motivations, such as
self-interest, beliefs about the fairness of the
income-generating process, past social mobility experience,
or expectations of future social mobility. Fewer people
wanted to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor in
2010 than in 2006 in transition countries. Support for
redistribution toward specific groups is highest for the
disabled and the elderly, but there is high heterogeneity
across countries in support for various redistributive
policies, as well as in the alignment between average
beliefs and actual policies. The empirical analysis confirms
the importance of beliefs about fairness in influencing
redistributive preferences, together with self-interest and
past and expected social mobility in European Union member
states (Western European and new member states), but only to
a limited extent in the non-European Union member state
group of transition countries. Regarding redistribution to
specific groups, self-interest appears to be an important
motivation for support for the elderly and families with
children, whereas values and beliefs are important drivers
of support for the working poor and the unemployed. Although
framing matters, the results are broadly robust to
alternative measures of support for reducing inequality. Show Less -